


I'll show you mine if you show me yours

by JuniperCypress



Category: Xenoblade Chronicles
Genre: Awkward Conversations, Body Image, Gen, Heartfelt Conversations, One Shot, Scars, Shirtless, Walking In On Someone, Xenoblade Chronicles Spoilers, awkward moment, bonus smash brothers joke, mildest body horror, right before game ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-21
Updated: 2020-08-21
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:41:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26033617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JuniperCypress/pseuds/JuniperCypress
Summary: Fiora stumbles on Shulk going for a swim, and they find themselves having a talk about scars.
Relationships: fiora/shulk if you squint
Comments: 5
Kudos: 45





	I'll show you mine if you show me yours

There were technically two scars for just the one injury.

Fiora saw the one on his back first: a small, glossy cyclone of pink scar tissue, to the left of the ridge of his spine. She only just saw its twin on his chest in the moment when he turned around—right before Shulk let out a yelp, and plunged down into the shallows.

“Fiora!” he spluttered, chin barely above the water’s surface as he tried to conceal himself. “Can’t a man have privacy?! How long have you been standing there?”

She grinned at his blush, despite the warmth in her own cheeks.

“You’ve got shorts on, haven’t you?” she pointed out. “In fact, I’ve been told sometimes you fight in nothing more than what you’ve got on now.”

“What?” Shulk forced a laugh. “I’ve never…who told you that?”

“Reyn did. That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard, Shulk.”

“Will you just throw me my towel, please?”

Fiora shook her head and bent to pick up the towel that had been abandoned on the rocks. Honestly, it wasn’t as if the new Colony 6 was struggling so much that it didn’t have bathtubs. Everyone had put a lot of work into it. Yet here was Shulk in the pond just a stone’s throw from the new square, crying his head off about privacy.

“And would you quit with the smile?” Shulk huffed. He raised a dripping arm out of the pond and caught the towel Fiora tossed to him. “What if I stumbled on you undressed out here and started laughing, eh?”

“Uh, you’d be dead meat.” Fiora crossed her arms.

“Well, exactly!” Shulk stood and wrapped the towel around his shoulders, ruffling at his hair with a corner of it.

“You don’t have to be the traveling adventurer in a place like this, Shulk. _I_ bathe in a house like a person,” Fiora said, and then let out a sigh. “Thank goodness this bucket of bolts doesn’t rust. I think I’d lose it if I couldn’t wash my hair.”

Shulk waded out of the shallows and returned to his pile of clothes. He turned his back and shrugged on the short-sleeved shirt he wore under his jumper, then his trousers, all in silence. Fiora now worried she’d brought down the mood.

“Do you, um…” Shulk turned back to her, eyes still downcast. “Do you know, then, how much of you is…?”

Fiora stepped back to find a spot to sit on the rocky outcrop beside the pond—preoccupying herself, in case she couldn’t control her expression. She now understood Dunban’s old efforts not to get annoyed with people just after he’d lost the use of his arm. A person can only handle being spoken to as if they’re broken so many times; but she knew Shulk didn’t mean it. She made little effort to hide the fact that she didn’t exactly love this body.

“Well, Linada gave me the basics,” she said at last. “I haven’t asked much for details yet. But, uh…”

She hesitated for a moment, and then lifted her forearm. A quick squeeze at some pressure points popped off the armored panel on the inside of her arm, from wrist to elbow. She held out the exposed mechanics for Shulk to get a better look: a smooth and silent working of pistons and gears, in place of tendons and muscle. The undercurrent of ether still keeping her operational pulsed through the inner walls, and along the straight shoots of metal. It was still hard to believe the mechanisms were a part of her; she couldn’t really feel them, but then, she’d never been much aware of the feel of her old arm either.

It only occurred to her after a long minute of examining the innards of her new limb with Shulk that this was maybe a gross thing to do. Shulk seemed to realize this at the same moment, because a sudden horror killed the fascination in his eyes. He turned away, propping himself up on the ridge of rock beside her.

“I’m so sorry,” he muttered. “Ogling you like a new engine or something, what’s wrong with me—”

Fiora smiled and slipped the panel back into place. “I know you don’t think of me as an engine, Shulk. It’s okay.”

She leaned back on her hands, tilting her face to the sun. “Bodies change no matter what,” she said, somewhat to herself. “Mine’s changed a whole lot, is all. I’m just glad to still have one.”

“I meant what I said before, Fiora.” Shulk turned his head and met her gaze, with a familiar look of determination. “I’m going to get you your old body back, no matter what.”

Fiora stifled a giggle. It was nice to see his old stubbornness hadn’t gone anywhere, but she didn’t want him to think she was laughing at him.

“And how are you gonna do that, Shulk? It’s not like Homs have spare parts and all that.”

“I don’t exactly know yet, but…” Shulk propped his chin in his hand. “Look, we’re already aiming to go up against a god, right? If we’re going to be taking on the controller of all organic life, well…maybe there will be some things we can control for ourselves after that.”

“Like our own bodies,” Fiora finished, a bit awed by the idea. It seemed a lofty concept, but then…they _were_ literally trying to bring down a god. “Heck, you could even fix your own body with that kind of freedom.”

“Fix _my_ body?” Shulk blinked.

“Oh, um…” Fiora looked away, embarrassed now. “I saw your scars, earlier. It’s not fair if I’m the only one who gets to fix myself up and move on.”

There was a long silence beside her. When the words came, they were slow and thoughtful.

“I don’t think I’d get rid of them,” said Shulk. “If I had the option, anyway.”

Fiora looked at him, surprised.

“But…it doesn’t hurt you, to look at them?” she asked. “Dickson and Zanza, they both treated you so _horribly_ that day…oh, is that it? The scars are reminders, for revenge or something…?”

“No, that’s not quite it…how do I say this…” Shulk stared down at the surface of the pond. Something like a smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. “The scars make me…happy, I think?”

Fiora shook her head. “You’ve definitely lost me.”

“They…they feel important to me.” Shulk touched a hand to his chest, over the healed wound that had nearly reached his heart. “It’s like…that moment Dickson shot me was the first moment I wasn’t a tool for Zanza anymore. They saw me as just an empty shell…I’d been _dead_ all those years, after all…”

He frowned, searching for the words. Fiora realized she was holding her breath.

“And you guys…you had no way of knowing if that person you knew was still in there.” He knocked on his chest a few times. “But you fought for me anyway. Sharla and Melia tried to heal me, Dunban and Reyn squared off with Dickson…I mean come on, Fiora, you got in a sword fight with a _god…”_

“Oh, stop.” Fiora dropped her face to hide her blush. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, you didn’t see what happened—”

“Riki’s a very good storyteller.” Shulk grinned.

“He’s a good storyteller because he exaggerates.”

“Anyway, my point is,” Shulk pressed on, “scars just show that you’ve been given the chance to heal, right? Dickson and Zanza gave me the wound, sure, but to me it feels like my friends gave me the scars. Like...marks showing that I was worth saving. When I look at them, I dunno…I just feel loved.”

Fiora had to look away from him. The workings of her chest in its current state may have been both mechanical and precarious, but at that moment there was a squeezing feeling in it as if she still had a heart in there.

“Was that a bit much?” said Shulk. She heard the wince in his voice. She took a breath and let it out in a laugh.

“You’re always a bit much. Don’t ever change, Shulk.” She lifted her head with a small smile. “So, you’d keep your body the way it is…”

In an instant Shulk blanched, and raised up his hands in a rush. “Ah--! I’m not saying you have to keep yours, though! It’s not quite the same, is it?”

It wasn’t, but Shulk had that way about him of making her think back on the positives. She remembered Sharla mixing up a salve to put on Fiora’s skin, when she’d first seen how red and irritated the joins were between flesh and metal. She remembered Reyn pumping himself up and rallying the others to hunt down that replacement part Fiora had needed. And she remembered waking up on the beach with her metal body in a tight embrace, a familiar voice choking on joy just from seeing her again…

Fiora closed her eyes. If she could at least find a way to keep it running, maybe it didn’t matter that she didn’t love this body. The people around her loved her in every shape and form.

“Well,” she said aloud. “If we _can_ change me back, maybe I’ll at least keep the wings.”

Shulk burst into laughter, an old familiar sound that made it feel for a moment like nothing had changed. “They’re definitely the coolest part.”


End file.
